and a
gallantly-equipped retinue, had the arrogance to appear among the
chivalry of the province, and demand permission to enter the lists. This
was considered as filling up the measure of his presumption. A thousand
voices exclaimed, "We will have no cinder-sifter mingle in our games of
chivalry." Irritated to frenzy, Martin drew his sword and hewed down the
herald, who, in compliance with the general outcry, opposed his entry
into the lists. An hundred swords were unsheathed to avenge what was in
those days regarded as a crime only inferior to sacrilege or regicide.
Waldeck, after defending himself like a lion, was seized, tried on
the spot by the judges of the lists, and condemned, as the appropriate
punishment for breaking the peace of his sovereign, and violating the
sacred person of a herald-at-arms, to have his right hand struck from
his body, to be ignominiously deprived of the honour of nobility, of
which he was unworthy, and to be expelled from the city. When he had
been stripped of his arms, and sustained the mutilation imposed by this
severe sentence, the unhappy victim of ambition was abandoned to the
rabble, who followed him with threats and outcries levelled alternately
against the necromancer and oppressor, which at length ended in
violence. His brothers (for his retinue were fled and dispersed) at
length succeeded in rescuing him from the hands of the populace, when,
satiated with cruelty, they had left him half dead through loss
of blood, and through the outrages he had sustained. They were not
permitted, such was the ingenious cruelty of their enemies, to make use
of any other means of removing him, excepting such a collier's cart as
they had themselves formerly used, in which they deposited their brother
on a truss of straw, scarcely expecting to reach any place of shelter
ere death should release him from his misery.

When the Waldecks, journeying in this miserable manner, had approached
the verge of their native country, in a hollow way, between two
mountains, they perceived a figure advancing towards them, which at
first sight seemed to be an aged man. But as he approached, his limbs
and stature increased, the cloak fell from his shoulders, his pilgrim's
staff was changed into an uprooted pine-tree, and the gigantic figure of
the Harz demon passed before them in his terrors. When he came opposite
to the cart which contained the miserable Waldeck, his huge features
dilated into a grin of unutterab